Stamper speaks his mind -- again

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Friday, February 18, 2005

Stamper speaks his mind -- again

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Five years ago today, Norm Stamper retired his badge and, instantly, the visionary but WTO-battered Seattle police chief sank determinedly out of sight.

A philosophical cop, he had come to Seattle from San Diego believing the police belong to the people. But he never belonged to the rank and file.

Rarely willing to color inside the blue lines, Stamper still managed in his seven Seattle years to forge new community policing partnerships and push domestic violence to the front of the department's agenda. But he also swirled at the vortex of civic squalls -- some churned by his own unbridled candor.

Dubbed "Chief Moonbeam" for his touchy-feely style and for embracing gays and diversity, Stamper rattled the city when, in 1998, he revealed to me that, as a swaggering rookie buzzed on power, he had baited homosexuals, blacks and long-haired "pukes" into taking swings so he could swing back. And worse.

Many officers howled that no such brutal cop culture ever existed -- certainly not in Seattle. And the Police Guild called for his head for undermining public trust.

Partly to diagnose the fever pitch to those reactions, Stamper began banging out the book he "had to write" on the first day after leaving office. "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Street-Smart Approach to Making America a Safe Place -- for Everyone" will be out in June from Nation Books.

"When people yell that loudly, you know you must have hit a soft spot," he told me last week at his Orcas Island home in the first interview to be published since he submerged.

He'd let the deadly Mardi Gras riots that followed his departure pass without comment. And the downfall of his former nemesis and boss, Mayor Paul Schell. And his own transformation from a face in the big-city spotlight to a semireclusive Orcas Islander who rarely leaves "the rock."

Getting it all down on paper and getting it straight were too important to Stamper to raise his head to offer an opinion or risk distraction.

He left Seattle in search of woods, water and village life. He found all of that -- plus screech owls at 4 a.m. -- at the top of a ridge near Eastsound. No sirens within earshot.

At the crest of an icy dirt road in the center of his own 10 treed acres sits the cabin. It comes close but it's not really a house. To the right of the front porch is the small writing studio where Stamper has hunkered for most of his time on the island -- a place where he has connected in a more personal way than he ever really did in Seattle.

No longer armed or shackled to a beeper, Stamper exudes contentment and a tangible pride of place whether he's hiking past his fish pond with Gunther the dog or stopping in the village of Eastsound to say hi to Pepe and Helene at the Radio Shack or to fellow movie fanatic Scott at Darvill's Book Store. (Stamper has rented, cataloged and rated 912 films since moving to the island.)

And if you heard the name Gunther and imagined that a lifelong cop would have a pet German shepherd, think again. "G" is a miniature, long-haired Dachshund who has spent much of his two years napping in Stamper's lap.

Partly it's the contradictions of this chief that have always driven people crazy.

He's the cop who once shot and killed a man holding a young son hostage. But he talks with tenderness about a bird he petted back to health after hit his window last week.

He's the chief who slammed the hammer down on drive-by shootings. But he gets upset at the sight of a spotted owl under attack by some robins high on Madrona berries.

Stamper, now 60, guards his new privacy with steel determination. And yet he has joined the Actors Theater of Orcas Island and performs scenes at the local Grange Hall.

It may sound like total escape unless you consider that it's his urgency to repeal "senseless laws" and to reshape law enforcement that drove him to write his book.

If anything, he says, the book is apt to cause even more of an uproar than what he calls "the infamous interview" of 1998.

For starters, he had deep and troubling differences with Mayor Schell. Still, Stamper says Schell was punished at the polls for all the wrong reasons.

Schell said childish and damaging things to and about the officers serving under him, Stamper said. And, despite the angry rift between him and the Police Guild, Stamper is both proud and protective of the police. Although he'll vent in the book about more of the mayor's shortcomings, Stamper says it's not Schell but the man he sees in the mirror who failed to plan adequately for WTO and to anticipate its scope of violence.

Ever since San Diego, Stamper has lamented the miserable failure of the so-called war on drugs and the need for decriminalization. In the book, he says he gets specific about how the obscene profits of illegal drugs make our current approach impossible.

For now, Stamper will say only that he talks to officials who are afraid if they support decriminalization they'll lose elections or the Bush administration will withhold funds.

Other chiefs also worry privately about the call-up of reserves to Iraq. "But can you talk about that without seeming unpatriotic?" Stamper asked. "Can you even talk about the morality of this war without seeming unpatriotic?"

He is haunted by the direction this country is taking, politically, socially and culturally: "I'm really worried about our civil liberties. The way the war on terror is restricting American's freedoms unnecessarily and distracting from the really important demands we were struggling mightily to meet before 9/11."

In politics, in war and police work, he said, "It's just so easy to dehumanize people who are different from us. Attach a label to them and that justifies anything you do to them from that point on." And that can include who gets shot or stopped by cops.

He's also troubled that domestic violence again has slipped from center stage.

It's a curse that scarred him as a child, and he carried some of the behaviors that were beaten into him into his marriage and fatherhood.

The fact that he never beat his own son, Matt, is a source of pride. Even so, the image of his arm arching to swat Matt once and only once on the butt bears an indelible guilt. "I am so conscious of that movement -- something I swore I'd never do."

Stamper writes in the same self-scorching way about the murder of Crystal Brame by her husband, Tacoma Police Chief David Brame. In his book, Stamper will write of his own insecurity and emotional abusiveness.

"SPD gets about 12,000 domestic violence calls a year," Stamper said. "Figure three or four times that many go unreported. Until we give DV assaults the same importance that we give drive-by shootings or stranger-on-stranger assault, we're going to continue to get those numbers.

"The celebrated cases, like Brame, only punctuate the daily reality of so many women and children being beaten and abused anonymously inside their homes."

Because Stamper has stayed removed, he can't say if current Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske holds domestic violence up as a priority. Kerlikowske takes a more "businesslike and conservative" approach to the job, Stamper said. "I don't think Gil is likely to make some of the statements I made, which, by the rank and file, would be characterized as loose-lipped and loony ... making him much less of a target."

If Stamper finds himself smack in the bull's eye again after his book hits the shelves, that's OK. He's grateful to the point of guilt for getting the chance to write it.

"My God, I know half a dozen people personally who are far better writers than I, put words on paper beautifully, and get maybe a couple of hours a week to write," he said.

He even verges on guilt for the cabin with a leaky roof that cost him 20 grand to repair.

With Matt's help, he moved everything in on June 16, 2001. Then, together, they sat in the swing on the wide porch at sunset with "a little sour mash sippin' whiskey."

"And I was thinking, 'My God! This is where I live! What did I do to deserve this?' "

It's not a lush life. Stamper's pension from the San Diego Police Department, plus a line of credit, supports him. His Seattle pension supports his lattes, he says, but little more since he wasn't there that long.

He lives alone and "uncoupled," and is working on a novel he won't talk about.

Married three times, Stamper doubts he'll do that again. All three wives said he was wedded to his work and writing is no less an obsession.

He says the end of his marriage to Matt's mother was the right thing. But he regrets the distance the divorce and his workaholic ways put between him and his then-small son.

Matt, now 38 and the father of twin baby girls, is close to his dad. But tears well when Stamper remembers the day when, at 19, Matt called to say he wanted to "make an appointment" to talk about his absence as a dad.

"He didn't want to go out to dinner. Just that once, he wanted to be as important to me as all those other people I always had appointments with," Stamper said.

It still tears him apart. It's just one of the many things Stamper's been sorting out since he sank out of sight.

Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or send e-mail to susanpaynter@seattlepi.com.

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